Thursday, July 31, 2008

After some struggling and contemplation, I wrapped up last week's column for Antiwar.com with the following passage:

There is something disturbing about how Karadzic's arrest is being cheered by slimy Eurocrats, Imperial interventionists and frenzied jihadists alike. Either he actually is a paragon of evil – which, assertions and allegations notwithstanding, there is little evidence for – or the three most destructive forces in the world today can agree on somebody (or a whole nation of somebodies, rather) they all love to hate.

Around that time, Mick Hume was writing for Spiked about how Western imperialists manufactured the myth of Bosnia (and Serbs as the "new Nazis") to give itself purpose and meaning.

It appears Brendan O'Neill, Hume's colleague at Spiked, had a similar thought to mine - and chose to put it together with Hume's thesis, producing a fascinating essay. "Bosnia, Hysteria Politics, and the Roots of International Terrorism" was published yesterday on Antiwar.com, and is a great read.

Essentially, O'Neill points out that the Empire and the jihadists worked together during the Bosnian War, both seeking a new purpose in a changed world, and finding a shared enemy in the Serbs. Their relationship was almost symbiotic: mujahedeen would be Empire's proxies on the ground, fighting the war, while the Empire recruited fighters for the jihad by making outlandish propaganda claims about "genocide", "rape camps" and Muslim suffering.

Concludes O'Neill:

There is nothing so bitter as a conflict between former allies. We should remind ourselves that much of today's bloody moral posturing between Western interventionists and Islamic militants – which has caused so much destruction around the world – springs from the hysterical politics of "good and evil" that was created during the Bosnian war. No doubt Karadzic has a great deal to answer for. But the West/East, liberal/Mujahideen demonization of Karadzic and the Serbs, and through it the rehabilitation of both Western militarism and Islamic radicalism, has also done a great deal to destabilize international affairs and destroy entire communities.

Read the entire article. It will open your eyes. That is, if you don't have them wide shut already...

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Officially, Radovan Karadzic was arrested on Monday, July 21. Except there are multiple reports indicating the arrest actually took place on Friday, July 18. Furthermore, Serbian police was specifically said not to have taken place in the arrest. So, who did actually arrest Karadzic? The Tadic government isn't telling.

Now, Serbian law doesn't recognize habeas corpus, but I'm pretty sure one's not supposed to be subject to arrest by someone other than police, or held for several days before being brought before a judge. But hey, he's a "war criminal," right? Who cares? Not like he's a mujahedin fighting to "stay home," or he'd get sympathy from the West...

Now, Serbian constitution does not allow for extradition of citizens - except to the Inquisition. Currently, Serbian authorities are refusing to extradite Miladin Kovacevic to the United States. Kovacevic is accused to severely beating another college student in a bar fight in upstate New York. So, illegal rendition of former presidents, generals and government officials to a self-appointed, illegitimate quasi-court is perfectly all right, but extraditing someone who almost killed someone else in a bar fight? Oh no, can't do that...

See, to have a proper extradition, you have to at least have an extradition hearing. There are all these judicial procedures. Neither Slobodan Milosevic (who was arrested on completely different charges - and never prosecuted! - before being rendered to the Inquisition) nor Radovan Karadzic ever got a hearing in court. They were simply packed into a van, then into a helicopter, and shipped off to a foreign country, where their chances of getting a fair trial are less than zero.

(If you're arguing that the ICTY has actually acquitted people - like Ramush Haradinaj or Naser Oric, think again. Those people they could acquit without bringing their own existence into question. Acquitting a Serb leader? No way. Without the alleged Serb "joint criminal enterprise", the whole Tribunal is pointless.)

Under Serbian law, Karadzic also had the right to appeal his arrest. His lawyer said he had mailed the appeal on Friday. Somehow, the all-efficient (ha!) Serbian Postal Service said on Monday that no such appeal has been mailed. So, as thousands of people demonstrated in downtown Belgrade, under the truncheons of riot police, Karadzic was packed off into a police van and shipped out of the country.

Now, Imperial satrap Boris the False and his followers love to talk about the Tribunal as "Serbia's international obligation." They are always big on obligations, somehow forgetting their job isn't to fulfill foreigners' demands, but to protect Serbian interests. And that would include, one supposes, upholding the law, from the Constitution on down. Of course, as that would require actually defending Kosovo, giving people they arrest a fair hearing, or not sending riot police to beat up people they don't like, it's too much of a hassle. They'd rather democratically democratize democracy the entire democratic day.

What happened to Karadzic is merely a symptom of a sycophantic, collaborationist regime gone mad. There hasn't been law in Serbia for a very long time. Since 1944, some say (or rather, 1941). Even the "evil Milosevic" still paid lip service to law, however. That's more than his "democratic" successors have done since 2000, embracing rather the all-trumping "convenience." The true purpose of the law, however, was never to bind criminals (they disobey it by definition), but to constrain the government from abusing the innocent-until-proven-guilty. So much for that, then.

For the second time after the October 2000 coup, the government, the media, and the "non-governmental sector" are all under firm control of the same (foreign) interests. The first time was during the martial law in the spring of 2003. Now the boot is treading a bit more softly, but it is still the same boot. And it is still stomping on the human face, forever.

Sunday, July 27, 2008

While I'm pretty sure the BBC employs a political (correctness) commissar, it definitely does not employ fact-checkers. I know, I know, big surprise. But if they did, they would avoid such whoppers as:

"Mr Karadzic declared independence for Bosnian Serbs in 1991..."

Huh? The "Serb Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina" (later renamed just Serb Republic, Republika Srpska) was established in January 1992, following an illegal decision by Muslim and Croat delegates to hold a referendum on "Bosnian" independence. Isn't it great how the BBC puts the cart before the horse?

Oh, but it gets better. Ever since Izetbegovic adopted the name "Bosniak" for people who were previously known as Muslims (in Izetbegovic's youth they were "Croats of Islamic faith," and in the days of his grandfather, "Turks"), foreign journalists have been thoroughly confused.

What's the difference between "Bosnian" and "Bosniak"? To them, none - they've used both terms interchangeably since the war. And hey, if the reporters can't tell the difference, and most of their audience can't tell Bosnia from Botswana, no wonder the ploy to establish Bosnia as the homeland of "Bosniaks" (with Serbs and Croats as vile interlopers) seems to have succeeded.

So what is one to think of this line, used by BBC to describe what Karadzic is wanted for:

He has been indicted for crimes against humanity and genocide over the massacre of up to 8,000 mainly-Muslim Bosniaks at Srebrenica in 1995. (emphasis added)

What in the name of Political Correctness is "mainly-Muslim"? Is that like "a little bit British" or maybe "somewhat-American"?

So, let's see... I'll have a Serbophobia Special, extra cheese. Ultra-size it, BBC, and don't worry about the facts. Not like your audience gives a damn.

Friday, July 25, 2008

Day three of the propaganda orgy following the arrest of Radovan Karadzic saw the publication of Roger Cohen's diatribe in the International Herald Tribune. It wasn't about Karadzic, or Bosnia, but mostly about Roger Cohen.

Look at this turgid prose: "sharp burst of Serbian violence that opened the war and 'cleansed' wide swathes of the country of non-Serbs, many processed through murderous concentration camps. Pits of bones form the bitter harvest of this genocidal Serbian season."

Oh Roger, not even the authors of the "concentration camp" hoax bother to repeat it any more. But no, there you go, ranting about "pits of bones" and "genocidal Serbian season."

He writes about the "stubbornness of love" he learned from an actor who lost his legs; of "fierceness of moral clarity" he learned from a "beautiful" Muslim woman who saw the world in black and white (with her, of course, as white); and the "quietness of courage" from a Muslim paraplegic who insisted he would always be morally better than the Serb who shot him. All these people exist to teach one Roger Cohen how to be an "advocacy journalist," eschewing objectivity for the sake of passionate reporting "from the heart" and being a "single dissenting voice."

Uh, excuse me? Roger Cohen was never a single, dissenting voice, but rather a part of a thundering chorus of career and aspiring journalists, scribblers, stringers, has-been and wannabe celebrities and various others who saw the tragedy of Bosnia as a way to wealth and fame.

So, what did Roger Cohen do to help Nermin Tulic after his injury? Did he perhaps organize a fundraiser to buy him a powered wheelchair? Or did he note how the Muslim authorities in Sarajevo almost kicked Tulic out on the street? No, because he doesn't really care about Nermin Tulic, unless he can use him to make a point.

How do I know about Tulic? Easy. He was my neighbor, barely a block away. I am from Sarajevo, born and raised. My family has lived in the city for generations. I was there during the war, too. Unlike Roger Cohen, I wasn't there as a tourist or adventurer. While he made fame for himself by peddling propaganda for the "Bosniak cause" I would starve and freeze and dodge bullets. And I would remember things.

I remember seeing Muslim artillery dug in around a playground - only to later hear of children who had played there getting killed after Serb guns returned fire. No one reported that.

I saw the Muslim authorities stealing 3/4 of people's food rations, and warehouses filled with aid from the world over that were set aside for black markets (controlled by the government) and the use of government officials, who dined on roasted lamb while the besieged citizens were starving. No one reported that.

I sat in meetings between Muslim officials and UN officers discussing utility repairs, and heard Muslims refuse to open water and gas valves to their own people as that would look bad on CNN. Roger Cohen didn't report that either. None of his colleagues ever did. And they knew damn well about all of this.

So forgive me if I have little respect for Roger Cohen and his colleagues, who dwell on their self-righteousness against "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide" but who really treat the people who suffered in the war as nothing more than props. They declare themselves the conscience of the world, and then manufacture a twisted reality in which murderers, thieves, terrorists and liars are idolized as "fathers of the nation" or "defenders of multicultural democracy." They talk about justice, but then provide alibis for mass murderers. They can't sleep when they think about Bosnia? Could it be that what's left of their conscience won't let them, because some part of them still knows the sheer wrongness of what they have done?

I don't know. But this kind of sanctimonious bullshit from Roger Cohen and other presstitutes who profited on our pain makes me sick. And sure I hope they all meet the kind of justice they proclaim to believe in.

Thursday, July 24, 2008

The orgy of lies that started on Tuesday with the news of Radovan Karadzic's arrest shows no sign of winding down. In fact, it is getting worse, with every Tom, Dick and Harry who's ever made a deposit into the Bank of Collective Serbian Guilt elbowing into the limelight to get his two minutes of hate in.

So normal has it become to hate the Serbs that no one is asking the obvious questions one would expect in this situation: what's all that fuss really about, for example, or whatever happened to the presumption of innocence?

Michael Huntsman takes to task "the likes of Lord Ashdown, Richard Holbrooke, David Miliband and a raft of others" who "all speak of Karadzic as if he had already been tried and convicted. The little matter of holding a trial concerns them not."

Though Karadzic's arrest is welcome, he claims, "not least because it brings the ending of the ICTY's mandate that much closer," it "surely is disgraceful that public figures should thus pronounce him guilty" before he's even been extradited. Huntsman concludes:

I have no idea if Mr. Karadzic is guilty or not. We shall only know that when he has had his trial and his appeals have been exhausted. Then we can say with precision what he did and to whom. That can only be achieved after the holding of a fair trial at which he is able to challenge through counsel the assertions of those who have already pronounced him guilty. Until then the likes of Lord Ashdown ought to keep their own counsel, he not the least because he may yet be a witness at Karadzic's trial. His impartiality and objectivity are now most certainly utterly compromised.

At first I was somewhat annoyed at what seemed to me naive idealism. Ashdown's impartiality and objectivity compromised? I've known this ever since his days as the Bosnian Viceroy. Trials by public opinion? Old news, even before the show trial of Slobodan Milosevic. And the notion that Karadzic will get anything even tangentially approaching a fair trial from a "court" that is specifically designed to preclude that possibility may sound laughable.

But then I realized that I may know all this, but the general public is probably quite oblivious. And that arguments such as Huntsman's need to be made, precisely because no one else seems to challenge the Inquisition or the likes of Ashdown, Holbrooke and others. Things like fairness and justice ought to be virtues - something that I sometimes forget when slogging through the swamp of lies, where there is no virtue, only power.

Another excellent contribution at TBJ is John Laughland's essay, "The Plight of the Bosnian Serbs." Again, it seems obvious - but everyone except Laughland (and Srdja Trifkovic, earlier in the week) has been too busy calling for Serb blood to even wonder. Laughland makes the argument the Serbs themselves have been too intimidated to make, one that years of demonization in the West have managed to prevent from being heard.

Laughland takes issue with the perception of the war - reinforced this week by thousands of reports, commentaries and essays - that the Serbs were the "aggressors" who committed genocide against innocent Muslim victims:

Even if one accepts that crimes against humanity were committed during the Balkan wars, it should be obvious that both these claims are absurd.

The Serbs were as much of an aggressor as Abraham Lincoln, he argues (note that I disagree here; Lincoln actuallywas an aggressor...). The accusation of aggression was deliberately made to condemnt the Bosnian Serb war effort as such, "(in terms of ius ad bellum) independently of any condemnation for the way the war was fought (ius in bello)." Laughland counters:

In fact, the Bosnian Serb war effort was no more or less legitimate than the Bosnian Muslim war effort. The Muslims wanted to secede from Yugoslavia (and were egged on to do this by the Americans and the Europeans) while the Bosnian Serbs wanted to stay in Yugoslavia. It was as simple as that.

He further illustrates that the Muslims "cheated" by deciding on an independence referendum in the absence of Serb legislators, and that Muslim behavior gave the Serbs "excellent grounds for believing that the Bosnian Muslim secession was quite simply a coup d’état":

In any case, once the Muslims had seized power in Sarajevo, the Bosnian Serbs sought not to conquer the whole republic but instead simply to fight for the secession of their territories from Muslim control. Of course atrocities were committed against civilians during this period, especially ethnic cleansing. But the same phenomenon is observed, I believe, and by definition, in every single war in which a new state is created... If the Muslims had the right unilaterally to secede from Yugoslavia, why should the Bosnian Serbs not have had the right unilaterally to secede from the new state of Bosnia-Herzegovina which had never before existed and a state, and to which the Bosnian Serbs had no loyalty whatever?

Laughland also takes issue with the charge of "genocide." But rather than focus on the number of those killed (Muslims claim 8,000, Serbs say much fewer), or the fact that Srebrenica was not a demilitarized "safe haven" but a base of operations for an entire division of the Bosnian Muslim army, he argues against it on principle:

What is clear is that the Srebrenica massacre cannot possibly be described as genocide. Even the most ardent pro-Muslim propagandists agree that the victims of the massacre there were all men. The Bosnian Serbs claim that they were combatants (although that is certainly not an excuse for killing them) but the point is that an army bent on genocide would precisely not have singled out men for execution but would have killed women too. The Srebrenica massacre may well have been a crime against humanity but it is impossible to see how it can be categorised as genocide.

Yet, he says, "there is a very clear political reason why" it has been. In his remarks following the capture of Karadzic, the current leader of Bosnian Muslims, Haris Silajdzic, argued that the whole Bosnian Serb Republic was based on genocide and aggression. Says Laughland:

The clear implication of what he was saying was this: if the very existence of the Bosnian Serb republic... is found, in a court of law, to have been had as its president a man, Karadzic, who is convicted of genocide in the process of creating it, then its status would be illegitimate and it should be abolished. The Muslims continue to claim control over the whole of the territory of Bosnia-Herzegovina, while the Serbs merely want the preservation of their considerable autonomy within it. (emphasis added)

And there you have it, in a nutshell. Serbs never denied the Muslims their right to a state - they did, however, deny the Muslims the "right" to dominate them by separating Bosnia from the rest of Yugoslavia and disenfranchising its Croat and Serb population. Muslims countered by accusing the Serbs of "aggression" and "genocide" - neither of which makes any sense, but both of which have been accepted as fact by the West.

Laughland will inevitably be condemned as a "Serb apologist" by the legions of actual Muslim apologists, men and women and creatures who have accumulated money, power and fame on the myth of Serbian aggression and genocide, persuading the gullible world that things that were patently untrue were the actual truth. That Laughland is one of the few in the West to even dare make the argument he made, or that no Serb leaders seems to have the courage to argue likewise, is a sad testament to the state of the world today, run by the peddlers of myths abut Bosnia.

It appears that the KLA regime in the self-proclaimed "republic of Kosovo" hired as their newest speechwriter none other than the infamous Kazakhstani troublemaker, Borat Sagdiyev. Evidence? In the July 18 statement to the Imperial Secretary of State, "prime minister" Hashim Thaci declared:

"Thank you, Madame Secretary, for the strong support that the United States of America has given to Kosovo and its people.

Today, Kosovo is an independent, sovereign and democratic state; it is a country of peace, stability and with a perspective to develop. Kosovo has excellent cooperation with all the countries of the region, with Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro, and in the near democratic future, we believe, also with Serbia. ....

This is a historical visit and meeting, because it is the first delegation of the state of Kosovo to visit Washington.

We expressed our new commitment to making progress in Kosovo, and awareness about the new responsibilities that we will take over for Kosovo as a state that will be part of the Euro-Atlantic family, part of NATO and of the European Union, and always in excellent relations with the US.

Kosovo and the people of Kosovo bow before the Government and the people of America for their support."

This had to have been written by Borat. Right?

(Apologies to Sacha Baron Cohen any offense that may have been accidentally given by associating his name with the terrorist KLA regime.)

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Mark Twain once famously said, "It is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

Richard Holbrooke probably never read Twain, and even if he had, that would hardly stop him. The man who ended the Bosnian War on America's terms (after Washington sabotaged every attempt to end it any other way), known for a complete absence of tact and only a loose attachment to the truth, Holbrooke is somewhat of an idol to Clinton-era interventionists, some of whom have been reborn as Obamamaniacs.

Once a month, he pontificates from the pages of the Washington Post, a newspaper that's never seen a Russian or a Serb it did not love to hate (unless the said Russian or Serb did Empire's bidding without a second thought; then he merely could not be trusted). He used this month's opportunity to gloat over the capture of Radovan Karadžić, former leader of the Bosnian Serbs.

Now, I'll give Holbrooke this; he doesn't hide his Serbophobia. He wears it proudly, like a badge of honor. That doesn't make him much different than the hordes of Serbophoboes-for-hire that infest Western capitals and media, but they usually have an excuse ready if someone brings it up, because their greatest fear is being accused of "intolerance". (Not that anyone cares about calling people on hatred of Serbs; in this day and age of political correctness, not hating Serbs is a hate crime.) But Holbrooke hates openly, and with pride. Fair enough.

Lies are another matter, though. His Post column today contains at least four verifiable untruths. I know, I know, a Serb-hater engaging in lies? What's the world coming to?! Well, I for one am sick and tired of lies. And I'm going to do something about it.

Lie the first: The one and only time he met Karadžić, Holbrooke and his team were in Belgrade, "trying to end a war that had already taken the lives of nearly 300,000 people."

This is what editors would call a "gross factual error" that should get any journalist fired on the spot. Not so Holbrooke, apparently. But the official demographic study of the ICTY (the same tribunal Holbrooke praises in his diatribe) from 2003 established the total death toll in Bosnia at just over 100,000 civilians and military. Subsequent research by a Bosnian commission reached the final figure of 92,000 dead. Yet the 250,000 or even 300,000 have been routinely used in reports of Karadžić's arrest as verified fact. It is, however, a lie.

Lie the second: Holbrooke blames Karadžić, Gen. Ratko Mladić, Slobodan Milošević and God only knows who else for the deaths of three of his colleagues, Bob Frasure, Joe Kruzel and Nelson Drew. They died when their vehicle slid off the road into a mine-filled ravine. In his Post column Holbrooke claims the road they traveled went through "sniper-filled, Serbian-controlled territory." In fact, the road they took went over Mt. Igman, a supposedly demilitarized zone under nominal UN control which was in fact occupied by the Muslims and used as their army's base of operations.

Furthermore, as Holbrooke reveals in his memoir, he blamed the Serbs because they would not give Frasure and his team a safety guarantee if they tried flying in. But the Serbs could not give any such guarantee, not because they were willing to shoot the plane down, but because they could not stop the Muslims from doing so. So the American diplomats used the road through Muslim territory and died. May as well blame the Serbs for the mountain being there in the first place...

Lie the third: Holbrooke claims his meeting with Karadžić resulted in the lifting of the siege of Sarajevo. Complete and utter nonsense. All he did was reopen the airport, which was closed due to ... drumroll... the NATO bombing of Bosnian Serb positions around the city! That was the bombing Holbrooke refers to in the column as threatening to continue (and he actually did, pleading with NATO to "give us bombs for peace," as detailed in his book). Even after the war ended, Sarajevo remained under an internal blockade, as residents needed permission from the Muslim authorities to leave the city.

Lie the fourth: Holbrooke claims that former Serbian PM Zoran Đinđić was assassinated in 2003 "as a direct result of his courage in arresting Milosevic and sending him to The Hague in 2001." Holbrooke may well believe this, as do many fanatical "democrats" in Serbia, but there has never been any actual evidence to prove it. To this day, it's just a conspiracy theory, which Holbrooke here presents as fact. Alright, then, Holbrooke was an agent of Al-Qaeda, tasked to arrange a deployment of American troops in Bosnia so they would present easy targets for terrorists and weaken America for the upcoming conflict with the Faithful. See how easy it is to just make up bullshit on the go?I've just about had it with this sanctimonious, uncouth, arrogant, corrupt slimebucket. He actually had the temerity to title his Post column today "The Face of Evil." He ought to look in the mirror.Post scriptum:

In addition to the four whoppers in Holbrooke's venomous diatribe, there is one passage that ought to be of interest to Balkans observers: "the negotiating team (meaning Holbrooke) had decided to marginalize Karadžić and Mladić and to force Milošević, as the senior Serb in the region, to take responsibility for the war and the negotiations we hoped would end it."

Here is the open admission that Milosevic was forced to negotiate on behalf of the Bosnian Serbs, and that he did not, in fact, exercise control over them, effective or otherwise.

Furthermore, Holbrooke's turn of phrase ("senior Serb in the region") suggests that neither he nor his superiors cared a whit about actual legitimacy of countries and leaders, but saw the Serbs as some savage tribe to be cowed into submission by a display o violence. Had this taken place somewhere in Africa, Holbrooke and his government would have rightly been accused of racism. But since the target of their hatred and contempt are the Serbs, no one cares.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

The arrest of Radovan Karadzic yesterday (or Friday, as some reports indicate) occasioned an orgy of Serbophobia in the Western press, as wire services, newspapers and TV networks competed in who would trot out more rancid propaganda to "spice up" otherwise factually sparse reports about Karadzic's capture.

Karadzic was thus described as minion of Milosevic (false), a "key organizer" of the Bosnian war (also false), the "Butcher of Bosnia" (that one's new), an architect of "genocide" in Srebrenica (wasn't that supposed to be Mladic?) etc. Dozens of reports I've read have repeated the baseless assertion that Karadzic had disguised himself as an Orthodox priest and hid in monasteries - a claim calculated to defame the Serbian Orthodox Church.

To describe the war itself, the media dug up every trope and cliche from their old clipboards: "Europe's most murderous conflict since the end of World War II" is just one example. Similarly, the siege of Sarajevo was alleged to have killed 12,000 (only if one counts the military fatalities, and then on both sides, could this number possibly be true), and the Bosnian war a "quarter-million" people. I mean, come on, that crap again?

I could also dwell on the lazy (or malicious? you decide) description of what supposedly happened in Srebrenica; to hear the mainstream media say it, Serb forces stormed the unprotected, disarmed civilian town, seized 8,000 men and shot them on the spot. Except none of this - none - is actually true.

It's revolting. It's disgusting. It's normal for the folks that brought us "Kuwaiti incubator babies" and "Saddam's weapons of mass destruction" and God knows how many other lies invented and disseminated to justify the Empire and its wars of conquest.

My next column on Antiwar.com will deal with the Karadzic affair, but I just wanted to express my intense revulsion with this obscene orgy of lies. I've actually survived the war in Bosnia, inside Sarajevo no less. It was terrible enough without presstitutes, pseudo-diplomats and NGO scum making up preposterous stories, as they have for the past 16 years. Everyone claims to be championing the "victims," but they don't; they use the victims to achieve their own ends, be that greater circulation/ratings/awards, conquest and domination, or simply money.

Now, if you want some actual facts about Radovan Karadzic and his role in the Bosnian war, I direct you to an excellent essay by Srdja Trifkovic posted earlier today. But if you are happy to feed on the offal poured down your trough by the mainstream media, what the hell are you doing reading this blog anyway?

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Rumors of my retirement following the formation of a Yellow-and-Red government in Serbia have been wildly exaggerated. I'm a libertarian, remember? When one believes that all governments are bad, and some are worse than others, seeing a really rotten government ascend to power is hardly a cause for despair. A sigh of exasperation, perhaps, maybe a bit of disappointment, but when one seeks to comment on the condition of humanity (or parts thereof) those come with the territory. May as well complain about the water being wet, or the summer being hot. Which it is, by the way.

The world being what it is, I'll run out of time before I run out of material. So stay tuned. I'm just getting warmed up.